Review: Aquariums, J.D.Kurtness, tr. Pablo Strauss
Thank you @dundurnpress for the ARC

🐠 Quebecois SFF
🐠 marine biologist MC
🐠 quirky, witty, humour at the end of the world

📖 ‘Try as I may to revive lost worlds, to turn back the clock and freeze my meagre successes in amber, it’s an impossible task since life is first and foremost a question of movement.’

This quirky Janus of a novel simultaneously looks back at the deep history of Quebec and looks forward to a boldly imagined future where astronauts have already managed to walk on Mars, entire marine ecosystems can be recreated in aquariums, but life on Earth is ravaged by ocean acidification and 99.999% of the human species is wiped out by a pandemic. It’s somewhat uncanny since the French edition was first published in 2019, right before the outbreak of covid.

Each chapter starts with a colourful snippet from the past that reimagines the lives of the protagonist Émeraude’s ancestors: a prehistoric tattooed man, an indigenous potion-maker who bore a child by a European sailor, a dystopian community of WWI draft evaders, a prodigy singer led away from her mute mother. The second half of the chapter is set in a futurist world, tracing Émeraude’s life from childhood to adulthood as a marine biologist.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The combination of ethnography, history, nature writing and low key sci-fi creates a sparkling narrative. The plot takes a back seat in this mood-driven novel, but it does build up to a powerful ending. Cameos of all the characters are fascinating, and the details are brilliant.

I particularly adored the marine descriptions in the final chapter, when Émeraude descends into the Abyssal Zone in a bathyscaphe. She discovers deep-sea extremophiles that thrive near methane deposits and along the shores of brine pools on the ocean floor, and watches bioluminescent creatures glow like underwater auroras. Their beauty makes habitat destruction all the more poignant.

This book is a great representation of what will happen if we don’t take care and help better our environment. Many people in society just give this quick read a read.

The cover was what really intrigued me at first; however, it was the synopsis that got me really excited to read this book.

It turned out to be something that I was not quite expecting. I found the chapters to be a bit confusing, as I was expecting to find a more straight forward story line. Instead, there were chapters that felt a bit separate from the main story line, although they were meant to add to it. I really liked the idea of multiple POVs, but I found the execution of that to be a bit confusing, at least until you get the hang of it.

Having said that, I do have to say that overall, I enjoyed the book. The writing is beautiful, and the author really brings the story to life through the vivid descriptions. I also must point out that this is a work by a first nations author who is, like the main character of the book, a marine biologist. Furthermore, this is also a work of translated fiction, something that I’ve never read much of, but I’m trying to this year.

Thank you to @netgalley and @dundurnpress for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Hmm, hard to say for sure how I feel about this novella. I came for it because of its promising blurbs.
A fiction story about a marine biologist is what interests me the most lately. In my opinion, the story just took so much time to heat up. We are constantly sidetracked by the main character's ancestor's story which makes the progress of the story and everything appear too crowded. And sometimes I wonder if it's significant.

It's seriously starting to take a serious turn towards what we want to see around 70% or so. I think I'll appreciate it much more if the author created a fine line and space to differentiate the lines intended for each of the characters instead of making them all close up adding to the confusion in readers; this of course after making sure the already available ebook.

But regardless of that, I need to say that the author has done what she knows best, being a marine biologist herself. She has put her knowledge by giving us plentiful to think and reflect on here and there. Also, provided us with some light on a serious problem and perhaps spread it out for us to ponder.

Thank you so much, NetGalley and Dundurn Press for approving my request.

This novella about a young woman, Émeraude, on an expedition to study life underwater in the Arctic is a challenging read that rewards you amply for sticking with the author’s multiple points of view story set in a world suffering from a pandemic plus climate change.

The writing is good, with vivid descriptions, and Émeraude is a funny and personable narrator. I thoroughly enjoyed her sections of the book, but felt my reading flow stutter a little during the transition to Émeraude’s ancestors’ or to the stories of two sea creatures.

Émeraude’s time on the Arctic mission is fascinating for how the scientists cope on board with the close quarters and the mission’s growing isolation: the story’s tone feels a little eerie as the ship loses contact gradually with the rest of the world due to the raging pandemic, all while Émeraude mourns the eventual loss of underwater life once people eventually begin resource extraction where they now sit, caught in ice.

Though I had a little difficulty getting into this short book, I loved how beautifully J.D. Kurtness brought all the story strands together in one underwater moment near the end while Émeraude looks upon the corpse of a dead whale.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Dundurn Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Thank you NetGalley and Rare machines publishing for the arc. This book is 3.5 stars for me. It’s extremely interesting to me that this was originally written before the pandemic, in September 2019. This book is set in a world that is similar to our own sadly and is set as the environments of the world are slowly dying. Our main character recreates aquarium environments for animals that are going extinct and goes on a mission to the arctic to explore the depths to save as many species as she can, just as a virus is taking over the world. However, sadly, this is only part of the book, and I enjoyed the main part of the book. I liked the science aspects and the discussions of what people are doing to our planet but the characters weren’t well enough explored or developed. I would have adored it if the book was primarily focused on this character and this story. The rest of the book is split between various ancestors of our main character and a few creatures of the depths. It was interesting to read these various perspectives as they showed different periods and the customs of said places and times but overall I struggled to understand the point of these perspectives and what they brought to the book overall. The reason I’m giving it 3.5 stars despite my criticisms is that I enjoyed the reading experience and a lot of elements of this book, I also think the translation was really good as it was a super smooth read. I would recommend this for something a bit different, it’s important to support translated fiction and this is a good commentary on what is going on in our world.

I enjoyed Aquariums, but at times it was hard to follow. Aside from that, the story portrays a bleak future for our environment if we don't start taking care of it. The descriptive writing brought this book to life.

The first 25%-40% of this book is a solid 5-star rating in my eyes. The portions where the narrator is a child are lively and beautiful and addicting to read. So too are the initial flashbacks to her ancestors. Once we approach the halfway mark, however, the book is overwhelmed with characters from various timelines and it becomes impossible to keep them straight. The portion of the text that correlates to the description--the protagonist on an Arctic expedition gone awry--pales in comparison to the fascinating and intricate early chapters.

A few years ago there was that book "Cloud Atlas". This one reminded me of it. While we read of a female n marine biologist who joins the crew of a research ship bound for the Arctics in the near future we see glimpses of other people and other sentient beings. They seem to be her ancestors and other beings we will meet in the storyline.
The book has two effects on me: It tells of a deep love of the sea. And it gives hope for the survival of the human race even against all odds.
It is a book that is not the most easy read and it hops along the centuries and a thinking car like a big Alexa OH DEAR, but it makes you think.
Recommended

A short novel of sweeping proportions and Cli-Fy, Aquariums pictures the world primarily from the ocean.
The main protagonist is marine biologist Émeraude. We learn of her upbringing and family and all that shaped her to create aquatic ecosystems (aquariums). Other POV's come from her ancestors and inhabitants of the ocean. It's a bit hard to follow without chapter titles, but Émeraude's life is vibrant and interesting. The trip in the ocean is almost an afterthought after learning about her whole life.

If you are interested in climate change, dystopia-lite, cli-fi and multiple points of view in an ancestral sense than this is a novel for you! #dundurn #raremachines

I was hoping for this book to be something special. Marine biology, animals, surrounding environment all that is very close to my heart, and yet... I can´t connect. There's the main story and little stories in between. I got lost, honestly, this timeline jumping made me tired and I lost interest in this book. It is a pity because this book had so much potential.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4419312891

"Had a toad entered the room where he drew his first breath? The signs are always there. It's we humans who choose to ignore them."

Émeraude is a marine biologist working hard to preserve aquatic ecosystems. This short novel follows her story from when she's a young girl right through to adulthood where she departs on a research vessel on a long mission to the depths of the arctic.

Émeraude's story is interspersed with tales of her ancestors. This is where the story became tricky for me. I found that the story jumped from person to person with little warning and at times it was difficult to tell whose story was being told at what point. Émeraude, as our protagonist, tells her story in the first person, so it's easy to recognise her passages but I found the rest of the character's stories, which were written in the third person, to be a little confusing and disjointed. There are very few direct lines of dialogue throughout the book, so perhaps this lended itself toward my lack of investment in the ancestor's storylines.

Nevertheless, it's clear that this novel is written from the perspective of an author who clearly cares for the world we live in. The imagery of the landscape and the animals is incredibly evocative at times, and in spite of this being a novel, I feel as though I learned a thing or two about the animals and environment around me.

I wanted to love this book more, especially because I believe it to carry an important message, but unfortunately for me I found its transitions between characters and the pacing of some of the stories to be a little off.

The novel itself is very short which means that the reader can get through it very quickly and if you feel invested in caring for the world around us, it might be worth a read.

i love marine biology and always look forward to more fiction novels in the field. This book had a great story and a great cast of characters. It was well written and a fun read.

I enjoyed the book and the way it all came together in the end. My only issue was that sometimes it took a couple of sentences until I figured out what character we're following and when we switched. Besides that, it was a nice and quick read.